That makes sense to me. I think 1 vs 2 comes down to personal preference, they both excel in different ways. I prefer the focused gameplay loop of 1, but I can imagine how groundbreaking the NPCs and the physics of the boat and car sections were back in the day. My main gripe with BM's weapon balancing is limiting machine gun grenades to three, but I understand that ten was overkill and fed into my "I'll save five in case I really need them" hoarder mentality lol.
Wild that you got banned for saying that given TF2 pioneered the practice.